Atlanta snow is fake? Latest conspiracy theory cites ‘plastic snow’
There are many people beginning to speculate that the snow is fake.

No, not that the snow didn’t happen–but that the white, frosty stuff on the ground is, in fact, not snow.

Several YouTube videos have been posted documenting “proof” that the snow in Atlanta is some sort of synthetic substance; additionally, these conspiracy theorists claim that this fake snow and the devastating affects it has had on the city of Atlanta are all part of a government plot. The conspiracy theorists say that this non-snow is the latest evidence of “chemtrails,” a long-standing conspiracy theory that postulates that the government hides chemicals in airplanes and douses unknowing citizens and locations with said chemicals. Theorists claim that this is all intended to serve as “testing” for when the powers-that-be unleash the full force of several man-made “natural” disasters, in the hopes of instituting martial law amidst the ensuing disarray.

China Is Cloning Pigs on an "Industrial Scale"
A new report by the BBC reveals that China isn't just experimenting with cloning—it's doing it on an "industrial scale." Which is at best interesting and at worst more than a small cause for concern.

Spearheaded by a company called BGI, the technology required to clone animals isn't particularly new, but the application to mass production certainly is. In a report for the BBC, David Shukman explains what he saw when he visited the facility in China recently:

The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves. This place produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year.

Organic Mega Flow Battery Promises Breakthrough for Renewable Energy

an. 8, 2014 — A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable.

The novel battery technology is reported in a paper published in Nature on January 9. Under the OPEN 2012 program, the Harvard team received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop the innovative grid-scale battery and plans to work with ARPA-E to catalyze further technological and market breakthroughs over the next several years.

he paper reports a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.

What Is The Polar Vortex And Why Is It Doing This To Us?
High-pressure systems over Alaska and Greenland, Samenow added, are "allowing the jet stream to dive south over the U.S. and also for this polar vortex to drop south with the jet stream."

For a more visual image of what's happening, though, we suggest an analogy offered by science writer Andrew Freedman, who spoke with Morning Edition's David Greene.

"This is air that is circulating the Arctic," Freedman said. "In the last couple of days, it's sort of become lopsided — sort of like a figure skater that has extended their arms and then tripped.

"You know, when a figure skater pulls their arms in, they spin tighter and tighter and faster and faster. But when they put their arms out, they are a little bit slower and a little bit more wobbly and more prone to fall or stop skating at the end of their routine.

"What's happening now is that a piece of it is down on the other side of the globe, but a piece of it kind of got lopsided and came down on top of us."

Breakthrough: One Step Closer to Nuclear Fusion Power Station

The superconductivity research group of the University of Twente (UT) has made a technological breakthrough crucial to the success of nuclear fusion reactors, allowing for clean, inexhaustible energy generation based on the workings of the stars in our galaxy.

The crux of the new development is a highly ingenious and robust superconducting cable system. This makes for a remarkably strong magnetic field that controls the very hot, energy-generating plasma in the reactor core, laying the foundation for nuclear fusion. The new cables are far less susceptible to heating due to a clever way of interweaving, which allows for a significant increase in the possibilities to control the plasma. Moreover, in combination with an earlier UT invention, the cables are able to withstand the immense forces inside the reactor for a very long time. The increased working life of the superconductors and the improved control of the plasma will soon make nuclear fusion energy more reliable: the magnet coils take up one third of the costs of a nuclear fusion power station. The longer their working life, the cheaper the energy will be. The research is a project within the context of the Green Energy Initiative of the University of Twente.

Cost-effective clean energy Project leader Arend Nijhuis: 'The worldwide development of nuclear fusion reactors is picking up steam, and this breakthrough leads to a new impulse. Our new cables have already been extensively tested in two institutes.' Mr Nijhuis has been invited for a new collaboration with China and expects that the UT system will become a global standard. The world's largest nuclear fusion reactor, ITER, is under construction in Cadarache in France, and is expected to start operation by 2020, as a joint project of the US, EU, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and China. However, China and South Korea have also initiated their own national large-scale nuclear fusion projects, in which the UT technology can be incorporated.